Friday 11 November 2005 11.10 EST
First published on Friday 11 November 2005 11.10 EST

President Vladimir Putin did not flinch at the expletives.

Russia's leader had invited Fedor Bondarchuk, director of this summer's action blockbuster, Devyataya Rota (Company 9), to give a private showing of the film at the presidential residence on the edge of Moscow.

When the film's heroes - a group of young men who bond together in 1989 during the dying days of the Soviet war on Afghanistan - began cursing, some aides in the audience shuffled their feet.

But Mr Putin, the owner of a sharp tongue himself and a KGB veteran of the "power structures", was untroubled. It was a "very good film" and "a tragic story from the life of our country and our people", he said after the screening on Monday.

The president is commander of the armed forces but his interest went beyond idle military curiosity. Several events in the past week have shown that Russia is once more in search of patriotic ideas to unite its splintered population.

Nearly 15 years since the break-up of the Soviet Union, it is tricky game that must balance shame for much of the past with celebration of real achievements.

Things did not get off to a good start last Friday when the new "people's unity day" public holiday was dominated by ugly nationalist marches in the capital.

Political analyst Aleksei Makarkin believes the Kremlin is right to seek a course of "moderate state patriotism".

"The problem with the holiday was that the authorities tried to produce a propaganda of unity of Russia's different nations and religions," he said. "But the ultra-right interpreted that as unity against enemies: Poles, Americans, Caucasians, or whoever else."

Much like the marches, the erection on Tuesday of a monument to "Iron" Felix Dzerzhinsky, former head of Stalin's secret police, the Cheka, could be dismissed as a blip.

Dzerzhinksy was a ruthless Bolshevik whose revolutionary fervour meant he saw no contradiction in founding children's homes while murdering thousands of the Soviet regime's opponents.

While his reappearance outside Moscow's police headquarters is a reminder of deep affection for some unpleasant figures, his popularity is nothing new.

More alarming this week was the showing on television of a repulsive new campaign advertisement for the Rodina party, which is running for elections to the city Duma next month.

The ad, which is being investigated by prosecutors on suspicion of provoking inter-ethnic violence, features two of the party's leaders berating a group of dark-haired men for dropping litter.

A slogan at the end of the ad hints the men - who are supposed to be Caucasians such as Chechens or Ingush - are themselves the trash: "Let's clean our city of rubbish!"

What is most troubling is the suspicion that the Kremlin deliberately cultivates this kind of rabble-rousing rhetoric.

Although the party denies it, analysts believe Rodina was set up by Mr Putin's allies to pinch votes from the communists. It scored good results in parliamentary elections two years ago and its strident leader, Dmitry Rogozin, is a popular figure.

"Russia is perhaps the only example of a state where the genie of radical nationalism is deliberately let out of the bottle," said commentator Andrey Kolesnikov in an article on Wednesday, arguing that Rogozin was already "out of hand".

At the same time, he argued, "it is probable that the genie, just like 'democracy,' will prove to be 'manageable'."

In other words, the Kremlin can nourish the chauvinists as hate figures while simultaneously using them to sideline legitimate parties that would threaten its own, United Russia.

It may sound Machiavellian, but Russian politics often works that way. And it's a dangerous operation when the end result is covert backing for politicians who are eroding, not building, a positive form of patriotism.

Vyacheslav Kostikov, a former senior diplomat, entered the fray this week, saying true pride in the nation would only spring from economic development.

"Instead of efforts to solve Russia's major problems - poverty and theft - we are once again being treated to worn-out slogans," he fumed. "We're being stuffed full of patriotic surrogates, to cover up the shortage of meat in the people's soup."

A shorter route to national pride would puff the country's unique legacy in science, literature and the arts.

Every democratic state must seek out a civic identity and shared past, argues Irina Sergeeva, a political scientist and joint author of a new children's textbook called Motherland Culture of the 20th Century.

But, she says, Russia places too much emphasis on military victories. "Instead, we should be looking to the incredible humanitarian and intellectual contribution Russia has made to the world, such as the writing of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky."